Yazid was part of a forgotten army of tens of thousands of inhabitants of the infamous banlieues who make everyday life in well-heeled Paris pleasant or even possible, reports The Independent.
They are office cleaners, street sweepers and deliverymen; chamber-maids, dish-washers, security guards and shop assistants. Most of them come from immigrant backgrounds. Many are Muslims.
Yazid, 40, would leave his home in the western suburbs every morning in the small hours. He had just been promoted to the position of foreman in a delivery firm which supplied bars and restaurants in Paris with freshly baked bread and patisseries.
He also had a second delivery job in the afternoons to provide extra cash for his family, a wife, two daughters aged 11 and nine and a son of seven. Yazid was, in other words, an example of “another” Muslim France – hard-working, law-abiding, family-loving – which rarely makes the headlines.
On Thursday morning soon after 4am, he was delivering bread, as usual, on the Boulevard de Sébastopol in northern Paris, close to the Gare du Nord. A car drove through a red light at high speed and collided with his van. Yazid was thrown on to the street and killed.
That speeding vehicle was a police car, its two occupants both off-duty detectives. They had been to a party and, according to police sources, the driver, a detective sergeant in an anti-drugs squad, had drunk four times the permitted level of alcohol. His companion, a lieutenant, had also been drinking heavily, the police sources said. Eyewitnesses told police the marked police car sped through several red lights before the crash. Both occupants were in custody yesterday.